Wednesday, 13 October 2010

Your Little Hobby

What's the best thing about being published? Lots of things - but one has to be that you no longer need to justify your writing. It has paid off, literally. You have money in your mitts. The money is almost certainly less than you dreamed of, but still, it's a cheque and it's really yours.

But until that point - well, it's hard. I don't mean hard like going down a mine everyday is hard, but it is hard to persist when no one else is taking your writing seriously. When it's called 'your little hobby'. When I was on the MA at Bath Spa, several of my fellow students confessed that their motivation for doing the MA was in part to have justification for spending time writing. They were dreading when it finished and partners/work colleagues stopped giving them the space they needed.

I think the only solution is to become as sneaky as possible. Don't tell people you're writing a novel, and you don't get asked ''got a deal yet?', which is infuriating when you haven't yet finished. At home, if you have partner/children around, slink off to your writing space and grab whatever time you can. Don't ask it's okay, because that will just alert them that you're going, and you'll never get away. Learn to adapt to your circumstances - a writer can't be fussy about the space they write in. Write whenever and however you can.

And if your neighbour does ask about 'your little hobby', stamp on their feet, hard. It may not make you the most popular person at the party but you will feel miles better. And next time, don't tell them that you're writing.

Hobby is a terrible word. I quite like the term pre-published, except that implies that everybody wants to get published which isn't always the case.

I know what you mean about justifying time. I always ask myself, does anyone justify spending time at the gym or doing sport? No, because it's seen as a good thing getting the body fit. Well, writing is keeping your mind and creativity fit so we should be doing more of it, not less!

I can remember, doing my M.Phil, feeling relief at being told 'you don't have to make excuses for the time you spend writing. You ARE a writer.' I suppose it's because we demand private space and a computer is sort of secretive. I'm sure someone who paints doesn't feel they have to justify the time they spend doing it, because the fruit of their labour is more obvious.

And no one expects them to sell their work for £££. I think the money thing makes a difference, people feel they're not validated as writers unless they've sold to a 'proper' publisher.

Which is daft because no one gets born clutching a publishing contract, so we all have to be pre-published before we can become published. It's nice, and I'm not knocking it, but publication isn't everything. Enjoy the writing, enjoy the process and keep the faith.

I hereby confess that my hobby is writing.I have no ambition to be published but I do want my writing to be as good as I can get it.I do it for me and an odd friend or two.Do I have to resign from here then?

This is something I've struggled with since taking my writing seriously some years ago. The worst culprits were my late husband's family whose disparaging comments about 'my little hobby' made me feel so miserable and worthless. I still hear their voices in my head all these years on. I don't see them often now, but still feel 'guilty' that I haven't got a proper job and they make a point of asking 'are you working yet?' when I do see them. Hopefully, I'll have achieved far more than them, maybe not in terms of material and financial gain, but in self-satisfacton and personal fulfillment.

Heavens - and what business is it of theirs anyway? Here's a quote from Stephen King from On Writing...

"I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction and poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. if you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all."

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About Me

I've written five novels, the most recent being Kissing Mr Wrong (shortlisted for the RNA novel of the Year 2011) and A Single to Rome (longlisted for RNA Novel of the Year 2010). I'm a full time writer, but I also like teaching creative writing which I've done for the Universities of Oxford and Bristol, and for ASE which is a branch campus of Franklin and Marshall College, USA. I'm the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Bath - I must be growing up...
About a million years ago I was an actor and played Vicky, Rodney's girlfriend, in Only Fools and Horses. I divide my life between two of the most beautiful places in the UK, Bath and St Ives and can't believe how lucky I am.
www.sarahduncan.co.uk